Tomorrow is Toni Morrison Day when we will celebrate the birth of the literary titan and Nobel Laureate. Of course we couldn’t let this month pass without acknowledging one of our favorite Bookish Black History Month Birthdays.
Proving that publishing a book is not just for young people, Morrison’s first book The Bluest Eye was released in 1970. Instead of suffering the sophomore slump, Toni Morrison published Sula followed by Song of Solomon, which garnered critical acclaim and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature for Beloved. I recently read Morrison’s eighth novel, Love, that has been sitting on my bookshelf for years.
The best part of reading Toni Morrison is always the way she has with words. No one does words the way Toni Morrison does words. Also like many of Morrison’s works, Love focuses on the many facets of relationships between Black women while highlighting how their intersections of race and gender influence their lives and the lives of those around them. Also similar to Morrison’s other works, Love uses non-linear storytelling while also blending narration from both the living and dead. What I enjoyed most about this story is I didn’t always know who was currently telling me their side of the story. Sometimes I could gleam the narrator from the context clues, but I wasn’t always certain. No matter the narrator, there was an interesting story to tell about the lives of Bill Cosey’s many women. There was also an American history lesson elegantly weaved throughout by Morrison.
What Toni Morrison book have you read recently?